There have been many rumours about the relationship between the new Arsenal manager, Unai Emery, and our highest paid player Mesut Ozil, and the boss only added fuel to the fire by leaving Ozil out of the matchday squad at West Ham yesterday.
This wasn’t helped by Emery telling us after the game that Ozil was not injured but was simply not considered good enough to play against Hammers. This is what the Arsenal boss said about the German midfielder on Arsenal.com after the game…..
on Mesut Ozil’s absence…
We had enough players to win today and impose our gameplan, and impose our tactical quality against them. We also respect them and they have good players. With their supporters here, they feel stronger. Maybe for the bench, some attacking players could have helped. But I think we had enough with these players.on why he didn’t use Ozil…
We decided that the players here were the best for this match. We’ve won with him, we’ve lost with him. No one player makes the difference between winning and losing the game.on understanding the interest in Ozil not being in squad…
Yes, but I can say he’s working with us normally this week. Like I said to you, we’ve won and lost with him. Today the players who were here are the players who deserved to be in this match. We could have won or lost, like we can with him. We continue working with every player because they are all important, but today the decision was to come with these players.
So Emery thought we had more chance of winning without Ozil in the squad, and not even on the bench? Guendouzi, Iwobi, Xhaka and Maitland-Niles went into the starting line-up, and even Ramsey, who could have played in Ozil’s role, started on the bench. I honestly can see no reason how Emery can justify these selections given that all those players are declared fit.
Can anyone else help me understand his logic?
Darren N